Hawaii Day #1

As most of you know, we just got back from our trip to Kauai. So fun! I took a lot of pictures and will space them out over several posts as I finish editing them. The first day we got in late, and just went to our hotel and went to bed. We woke up early the next day and set out to explore the island. Our first stop was breakfast at Egberts, a cute little shop with amazingly big omelets. Then we went and rented snorkel gear from Snorkel Bob's. We found out some good places to snorkel and went to our first one. 

Lydgate beach is a fully enclosed reef that is great to practice snorkeling in. There is a lifeguard, and not much of a current. You can also stand everywhere pretty much. And there are cool fish. I was a little freaked out about snorkeling because I get claustrophobic about not being able to breath. But I practiced going under water while holding Brighams hand and finally set out! It was really fun, and we spent a while there practicing and looking at all the cool fish.

Then we were close to Opaeka'a Falls, and decided to drive up there and take a look. They were far away, so I had to zoom in a lot to see them well. But here is a picture:

If you walk across the street there is a great view as well.

After that we decided to head up to the northernmost point on the island and go snorkeling. Ke'e beach is beautiful and a great snorkeling place as well. It took a while to drive up there, so we stopped for lunch at this yummy pizza place along the way and I of course got a Hawaiian pizza. The pineapple was yummy! There were pretty flowers there so I snapped a couple of pictures:

On our way back to the road from the pizza place, we got a little lost, partially on purpose to see more of the island. We were glad when we stumbled across this lighthouse that we weren't planning on stopping at. It was so pretty! It is Kilauea Lighthouse.

After ke'e, where we saw more fish, no turtles though like we were hoping, we headed out and got dinner and got ready to watch the sunset. We had dinner consisting of a teriyaki burger with pineapple on it, and our second Hawaiian shaved ice of the day. For those of you who have never had a Hawaiian Shaved Ice, you have not lived yet. It is like a snow cone for adults and 10 times better. They put ice cream on the bottom, use a razor to shave the ice so it is smooth, and have all different flavors of syrup. My favorite being vanilla. We wanted to watch the sunset from Hei'ena beach, but our GPS doesn't really know where anything is in Hawaii. So we ended up at a different location, St Regis hotel. The sun was about to set, so we watched it from a cliff there. One interesting thing is that St. Regis offers free valet parking to the public for an unlimited amount of time. My first time have valet parking and it was nice. The sunset was not what I was hoping for out of Hawaii, but it was nice.

After that we were pretty tired and headed back to our Kauai Sands hotel for some much needed rest. The Kauai Sands was not a bad hotel, minus the cockroach that attacked me in the shower. However, the only non-smoking room available had 2 full size beds, and we pushed them together to have the biggest bed of our lives! That was fun. It also had a fridge, and balcony. Not bad.